If you were going to teach a lesson about U.S. trade, a good place to start is to ask the question, “What do you believe is true about U.S. trade with other countries?”

Write down what everyone says or a least the key ideas on a white board without comment. Whether these ideas are right, wrong or somewhere in between they can prevent learning something new on the subject.

You could expand this by asking questions like,

“Who is the U.S.’s largest trading partner?”

“What’s are biggest import from China?”

“Who do we buy more from France or Korea?”

You get the point. Now present some facts from a reliable, non-bias source. I prefer getting raw and mostly unfiltered data from places like the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the US Census Bureau. Usually what you read elsewhere is analysis of this data.

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This blog is focused on anything related to learning faster. From time to time, I'll be posting about my book Learning Paths: Increase profits by reducing the time it takes to get up-to-speed (Pfeiffer 2004).
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